Competitive unit maintenance scheduling in a deregulated environment based on preventing market power

Authors: HESSAM GOLMOHAMADI, MARYAM RAMEZANI, HAMID FALAGHI

Abstract: With the advent of electricity markets, the traditional approach to unit maintenance scheduling (UMS) needs to undergo major changes in order to be compatible with competitive environment structures. The transition from a vertical power system to a competitive structure makes many challenges for policymakers and market designers. In this paper, a new approach to UMS in competitive electricity markets is presented. The main part of this study involves both how to treat generating companies (GENCOs) fairly and how to guarantee power system security during the maintenance scheduling. This paper advances the UMS in the electricity market so that one can determine which maintenance plans are to be selected while guaranteeing power system security and ensuring fair competition among GENCOs. The main contribution of this study is the constructing of a new kind of UMS to prevent market power and economic withholding. In order to guarantee power system security, a probabilistic approach of reliability analysis is presented. This probabilistic methodology is designed based on the health levelization and well-being analysis technique. The optimal strategy profile is defined by a genetic algorithm, so it can strike the right balance between profit and security with fair competition. In the end, maintenance scheduling as numerical results for 9 GENCOs of a large-scale IEEE reliability test system is applied to show the applicability of the proposed framework.

Keywords: Competitive market, compensation, fairness, reliability, maintenance scheduling

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